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    Star Destiny Episode Two
    Star Destiny Episode Two
    Star Destiny Episode Two
    Ebook150 pages1 hour

    Star Destiny Episode Two

    By Odette C. Bell

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Let her free or die by her side?
    Williams is faced with a split-second decision. He chooses to live. For now. This situation is too unforgiving to cut him slack for long, though.
    When they crash land on a growth planet, the one thing he can’t allow starts to happen – Celena begins to soften his heart.
    She’s a criminal, a runaway from the Emperor, yet just like Williams, she didn’t have a choice about her past.
    His heart is one thing – this planet’s another. The pirates and scavengers aren’t done hunting them.
    Things are about to heat up. And this time, there’ll be no cooling down.
    ....
    Star Destiny follows a runaway weapon and the hapless lieutenant drawn into her troubles as they fight a corrupt galactic emperor. If you love your space operas with action, heart, and a splash of romance, grab Star Destiny Book Two today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOdette C. Bell
    Release dateMay 3, 2018
    ISBN9780463060780
    Star Destiny Episode Two

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      Book preview

      Star Destiny Episode Two - Odette C. Bell

      Chapter 1

      Williams

      The ship’s alarms blared, warning them that the pirate vessel was only seconds from jumping and dragging the patrol ship with it.

      Time didn’t stop. This time, it sped up. It gave him a fraction, only a fraction of a second to decide.

      Do it, Celena screamed.

      So he did. All it took was a single thought. One simple neural command, and the cuffs just fell off her wrists. They clunked against the floor. And Celena? Glowed. It didn’t take seconds. It happened instantaneously. As soon as the cuffs were off, her power returned in full.

      And it was just in time.

      The patrol ship’s incessant alarm warned them they were jumping.

      … He watched space around her shudder. He’d never seen anything like it, and maybe he’d never see anything like it again. Because maybe this had been the worst mistake of his life.

      It looked as if the mere image of her tore a hole through reality right down to the fabric of the multi-verse.

      He didn’t have time to speak, didn’t have time to breathe. The only sense that worked was his eyes.

      And he would never forget this sight for the rest of his life.

      In the few split seconds it took Celena to gain control of the quantum field aligning around them, without his knowledge, she accessed the ship, turning the thrusters on to full. It saw them slam out of the side of the pirate vessel, chunks of hangar door scattering around them in an arc.

      As the quantum tunnel formed, they veered off to the side.

      And they were thrown right out of the frying pan and into the fire.

      …

      Celena

      This was worse. A trillion times worse than what she’d been forced to do back on Jeopardy Station. This wasn’t taking control of a tunnel she’d programmed. This was aligning to one several seconds after being released from the torture of the cuffs, all with a burned ankle and her body screaming at her to escape.

      As the quantum tunnels grew around her, pulling her mind in, threatening once more to take her down to a level of pure distraction – one she would never be able to rise from again – she felt the ship move. Through space. It was flung beyond the reach of the ship’s sensors.

      She felt the quantum tunnel break around the ship as they arrived in normal space, and her weariness caught up with her. This time, however, she didn’t slam against the floor as her legs gave way.

      Two hands wrapped around her shoulders, holding her in place. Two strong hands. Despite the fact her senses barely worked as fatigue took hold of her body, she could discern the feel of Williams as he repositioned himself.

      Just for the smallest moment, a single unit in time, her body almost celebrated the fact she’d finally found somebody who cared enough to hold her.

      Then she felt the cuffs twitch on the ground. They shot up and closed around her wrists, and the torture began anew.

      Her eyes rolled into the back of her head as she slumped against Williams. She was unconscious well before he wrapped his arms around her back and cradled her down to the ground.

      He’d trapped her again.

      When she woke, there would be no trust between them.

      He’d just broken it.

      …

      Williams

      He didn’t know what to do with her body as the situation broke around him.

      His mind couldn’t catch up to the fact they’d just been hurled halfway across the galaxy.

      His mind didn’t need to work. His hands knew what to do.

      They cradled her slumped shoulders, keeping her locked close as he allowed her head to tilt back. He brought up his free hand and ran his thumb across her cheek, gently prying down her eyelid.

      He stared at her irises.

      It was dull, just as her eyes had been the last time the cuffs had worked.

      … This was where he should drop her back to the floor, satisfied that she was locked down once more.… It wasn’t. He got stuck, trapped staring into those eyes. Once more he reminded himself of the fact he’d seen this coming. No, not the fact that she was an Ares’ Daughter – the fact her eyes had been artificially dulled.

      She was….

      He couldn’t finish that thought.

      The patrol ship’s sensors went wild, finally catching up to the fact they’d been thrown across the galaxy.

      They blared at him with the kind of insistence you could not ignore unless you were completely deaf. Even then the computer would just adjust and send vibrations hurtling through the hull until you jumped up and responded.

      He allowed her to rest, but this time, he didn’t throw her onto the floor as if she was some kind of useless, broken toy. He guided her down, gaze cutting to that nasty cauterized burn across her ankle. He allowed it half a second to make his stomach curl, then he jumped up to respond to the ship.

      He bent over the controls, instantly going to the stellar cartography systems to ascertain their position.

      … Jesus Christ. She’d thrown the ship, all right, right across the Andromeda Galaxy. They were now two galactic lengths away from the Milky Way.

      It was enough that he brought a hand up, flattened it on his brow, and tried to push his fingers through the sweat.

      He couldn’t dry himself. There was no damn point.

      Maybe he was somehow growing accustomed to this breakneck situation, or his body was just too damn fatigued, because this time, he didn’t sit there, staring as he fell apart.

      He quickly located the nearest M-class planet.

      Halifax Two. It was nearby, and the atmosphere was breathable.

      He’d never been there. He’d rarely come this far out.

      As his gaze ticked down to the explanation of the planet in the universal database, he realized it was little more than a growth world. A growth world was a planet that had been terraformed with all kinds of life to see what would take root. In however many hundred years, it would be stripped of its resources and terraformed again.

      Yes, he said, spitting out the word, his voice shaking as his gaze chanced upon the one thing he needed to see more than any other.

      Halifax had a stationed emergency ship and base.

      It was a way station for idiots like him. Ones who’d been thrown far out of their mission parameters and needed to call home.

      Calling home in the Milky Way was one thing. Out here in Andromeda, he’d need the assistance of a proper communications relay to call in help.

      As long as the database entry for Halifax Two was still correct, things were looking up.

      Finally.

      A split second later as an alarm blared through the ship, things promptly started looking down.

      In pale-faced terror, Williams watched as the view screen lit up with proximity alarms.

      There was a vessel 10,000-kilometers away, and it was closing fast.

      It wasn’t Imperial.

      It belonged to the scavengers.

      Williams slumped over the console as he realized he’d escaped one danger only to face one far worse.

      For a snapped second, he yanked his head over his shoulder, and he stared at Celena. His gaze locked on her cuffs.

      … Her power had seen them thrown halfway across the galaxy. Who knew what she could do if he let her loose?

      Leave you in the dust, escape, and continue her crime spree, he answered his question, his words automatic as he twitched back to the screen, settled his hands over the controls, and got down to saving them.

      The odds looked grim.

      But Williams was a man who believed you made your luck if you cried enough tears and found a way to bleed more than your opponent.

      Before this new episode was done, he’d do both.

      Chapter 2

      Williams

      It took the scavenger vessel only three minutes to close the 10,000-kilometer distance to Williams’ ship.

      In that time, Williams had done all he could conceivably do.

      He had no idea how or why the pirates had captured this patrol ship, but they’d gutted the weapons.

      The magnetic torpedoes that were usually housed in the weapons bay of one of these patrol ships were gone.

      So were the variable tractor beams.

      The only things that remained were the front pulse cannons.

      They were the kinds of weapons you would use to shoot across somebody’s bow. Warnings, and nothing more.

      The scavenger vessel, on the other hand, was equipped with some of the deadliest, and most illegal, weaponry in Andromeda.

      Williams couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe. He could barely hold himself up. Every single scrap of mental and physical attention was locked on his fingers as they danced across the console. Any faster, and he’d tear his knuckles from his hands.

      Williams had a reputation, a deserved one. When things got tough, he would always find unique ways out of seemingly impossible situations. It’s what his life had taught him.

      Now was no different.

      … Except it was different. It was more pressured. Don’t get him wrong, there’d been many occasions in his fraught life when Williams had come face-to-face with inevitable death.

      He couldn’t count the number of times he’d had to find his way to an escape pod through a broken, smoke-filled ship. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d received shots so deadly, it was nothing but a hair width that had saved him from having his heart torn out.

      But again, this was different. The reason was the woman lying two meters back, her head tilted to the side, her hair splayed across her pale cheeks.

      It wasn’t just his sense of duty – his need to go through with his mission and deliver her to the Emperor.

      It was….

      He didn’t get a chance to finish that thought.

      Something rammed into the side of the ship.

      It was a tractor hook. A massive modular metal unit kept together by pulsing balls of scalax energy.

      The hook was infinitely adjustable, and if you had enough energy to keep

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